Council on Foreign Relations

Australian

• Civil Liberties: Commentator Janet Albrechtsen considers the balance between risk and civil liberties in her blog. She says that with President Barack Obama due to ask Kevin Rudd to commit more Australian troops to Afghanistan, it's time to consider whether there are too many civil liberties.

Boston Globe

• Iraq Victory: Columnist Jeff Jacoby writes that six years after the beginning of the war in Iraq, it is ending in victory. As in every war, the price of that victory was higher than we would have wished, he says; the price of defeat would have been far higher.

Christian Science Monitor

• U.S. Sanctions: Bryan Early of Harvard's Kennedy School writes that faced with the largest economic crisis since the Great Depression and President Obama's goal of mending the U.S. image abroad, the United States government must reevaluate its sanctions policy.

Daily Star (Lebanon)

• Iraq Visit: In an editorial, the paper welcomes what it terms Turkish President Gul's landmark visit to Iraq this week, describing it as a long-overdue thaw in ties that have been strained going back to the heyday of the Cold War.

Daily Telegraph

• Iran's Dilemma: Journalist David Blair writes that President Obama's conciliatory and nuanced approach towards Iran confronts that country's leaders with their greatest foreign policy dilemma since the end of the war with Iraq almost twenty-one years ago.

Daily Times (Pakistan)

• Afghan Strategy: Commenting on President Obama's latest remarks on U.S. strategy in Afghanistan, the paper says in an editorial that he wants to avoid the impression that if the Bush administration was reluctant to take on the Taliban, he is willing to bring a tougher war to Afghanistan.

Dawn (Pakistan)

• Afghan Exit: Dawn also considers President Obama's remarks in an editorial. It wonders if the United States is losing its appetite for the fight in Afghanistan and is preparing to cut and run.

Financial Times

• Regulating Capitalism: Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg, Germany's minister for economics, writes that the financial crisis has shown that capitalism needs rules but that governments should be careful not to impose public control outside the financial sector.
• German Elections: In an editorial, the paper notes calls for an early general election in Germany, but points out the constitutional obstacle to an early poll. It says the current coalition has one important issue yet to resolve before elections - how to deal with toxic assets.

Globe and Mail (Canada)

• Economic Crisis: Columnist John Ibbitson worries that President Obama might have got it all wrong in his attempts to find a way out of the economic crisis. He quotes economists who say a "lost decade" for the world economy is quite possible.

Guardian

• Israel Egypt: The paper's Middle East Editor Ian Black considers the lessons to be learned from the peace agreement signed between Israel and Egypt thirty years ago. He cites the treaty's survival despite two wars in Lebanon, two Palestinian uprisings, and two wars in the Gulf.

Haaretz

• Israeli Government: In an editorial previewing the next Israeli government, the paper says the suspicion arises that at the head of the government-to-be, it is not the Netanyahu of 2003, who had the national interest in mind, but rather the easily extorted and pressured Netanyahu of 1996, who is prepared to do anything to rule.

Hindu (India)

• G-20: Commentator Hasan Suroor is doubtful that the forthcoming G-20 summit will change anything significant. Expect a high-sounding "agreement" around platitudes about the danger of protectionism, need for unity and coordinated approach buttressed with a list of recommendations, he writes.

Independent (UK)

• African Hope: Mary Robinson, a former president of Ireland, detects glimmers of hope in eastern Congo and what she calls a profound change of mood in the relationship between Joseph Kabila and Paul Kagame, the presidents of the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda respectively.

International Herald Tribune

• Illegal Immigrants: In an editorial, the paper accuses President Obama of flinching on illegal immigration. If he is ever going to win the battle to put 12 million illegal immigrants on a path to citizenship, he will have to dismantle the core restrictionist argument that being an illegal immigrant is an unpardonable crime, it says.

Jordan Times

• Obama's Message: Commentator Hasan Abu Nimah writes of President Obama's video message to Tehran that for all its conciliatory symbolism, Obama's video message rests on the same set of assumptions that Iran, not U.S. policy, is the problem.

New York Times

• Nuclear Arms: In an editorial, the Times says President Obama has no time to waste in fulfilling his campaign pledges to resume arms-control negotiations and seek deep cuts in nuclear weapons in pursuit of a nuclear-free world.
• Presidential Advice: Op-ed Columnist Thomas Friedman offers advice to presidents: you can't be too honest in describing big problems, too bold in offering big solutions, too humble in dealing with big missteps, too forward in retelling your story, or too gutsy in speaking the previously unspeakable.

Wall Street Journal

• Iran Sanctions: In an editorial the Journal says that while it believes generally that economic sanctions are a poor foreign policy instrument, it's prepared to make an exception in the case of Iran. The only way Iran's regime is going to stop its nuclear program is if it feels some pain it can believe in, it says.

Washington Post

• Sudan Choice: CFR Senior Fellow Michael Gerson considers the choices facing the international community over Sudan and its president Omar al-Bashir. He believes it should increase the pressure on Sudan's regime.
• Moderate Democrats: Three Democratic senators explain in an op-ed why they have formed a moderate Democratic working group in the Senate, and offer their support to President Obama in his belief that the United States cannot afford to wait any longer to fix health care and transition to a clean-energy economy.
• Fragmented Economy: Commentator Carlos Lozada challenges the idea that the United States has a national economy. He quotes three experts who contend that the real drivers of the country's economy are its hundred largest metropolitan regions.

Washington Times

• Iraq Ambassador: In an editorial, the paper describes Christopher Hill, the president's nominee for ambassador to Iraq, as a disconcerting choice to head America's largest embassy, located in the most dangerous region in the world.